


Untitled

by SaturnianDreamer



Category: Space Cases (TV)
Genre: Banter, Boss/Employee Relationship, Character Development, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, Late Night Conversations, Male-Female Friendship, Plans For The Future, Pre-Relationship, Romantic Friendship, Science Fiction, Self Confidence Issues, So Married, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 08:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14040147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaturnianDreamer/pseuds/SaturnianDreamer
Summary: Davenport cursed her sleep-deprived mind for being unable to explain what possessed her to walk on autopilot to his door in the middle of the night. So instead, she asked one of the most loaded textbook questions usually reserved for job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

> No infringement intended. I don't own Space Cases, but I miss it a lot.  
> The title actually is "Untitled." It will make sense at the end.  
> This started out as an idea dumping ground, so you may recognize bits and pieces that made their way into other fics, but this doesn't fit neatly into any of my preexisting ficverses. So here, have a standalone!

T.J. Davenport always had feelings for Seth Goddard. Sometimes they were feelings of admiration and sometimes they were feelings of annoyance, but she'd always cared enough to have some opinion of him. Even back at the Starcademy when she'd first met him face-to-face and her feelings of hero worship turned into feelings of disappointment, there was something about him she couldn't seem to shake. Not that she would admit this to anyone, least of all the crew of The Christa. In fact, she'd only very recently been able to admit it to herself.

Certainly the Commander had been insubordinate. Nearly starting a war was not something that would earn anyone a promotion. Surely he was even considered a criminal by the standards of UPP law. T.J. had been shocked and devastated to hear of Goddard's apparent act of treason. But she'd been even more surprised when, instead of jail time, he had been sentenced to teach a band of misfit STARDOGS-in-training and remain under her supervision. Davenport was still unclear as to how the court arrived at that specific ruling.

The very notion that time spent in her presence was meant as punishment was insulting to say the least. But maybe the sentence was not the punishment T.J. first thought it to be. Perhaps it was meant to be a learning experience: an opportunity for Goddard to learn how to follow the rules. The unintended consequence of her spending time in his presence, however, was that T.J. had learned how to bend some of those rules to her liking.

Eventually, the two would change each other for better or worse and meet somewhere in the middle, wouldn't they? Spending seven years together without the influence of their peers or supervisors would undoubtedly have consequences. T.J. suspected that one of these consequences would be an increased interest in Goddard, but she had hoped (for the sake of her own sanity) that she would tire of him and her concentration could be spent on other more productive endeavors.

But no.

Seth Goddard was a welcome distraction from T.J.'s worries. The more she thought about him, the less she seemed to care about anything that used to matter to her: rules, ranks, procedure, awards. Seth and the crew mattered most. T.J. feared returning home was even less of a priority now. She had nothing to return to. No family, no job, no friends. Despite what the headmistress had claimed, T.J. had very few people she considered true friends back home. The individuals in question were work colleagues, simple as that. The crew was her family, caring for them was her job, and the Commander was her friend. 

"Miss Davenport?"

T.J. snapped out of her thoughts to find Goddard in front of her. In his pajamas and robe. In the doorway. To his quarters. Staring. Waiting. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

"You wanted me?"

"What?!" Davenport squeaked, her expression one of shock.

"You wanted to speak with me? I assume that's why you knocked for me at," he glanced back into his room and checked the timepiece on his bedside table, "oh-three-hundred?"

T.J. flushed red in embarrassment. "Oh-three-hundred hours? Goodness, I hadn't realized. I was awake grading essays, and time seemed to escape me. I'm terribly sorry, Commander. It can wait."

Goddard gave her a look of skepticism and a nonchalant shrug: one of the most confusing combinations of gestures he was prone to using in her presence. "Well, I'm awake anyway. You want to talk about whatever it is now?"

Davenport cursed her sleep-deprived mind for being unable to explain what possessed her to walk on autopilot to his door in the middle of the night. So instead, she asked one of the most loaded textbook questions usually reserved for job interviews: "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

Goddard was taken by surprise. Unsure how to respond, he countered with a defensive maneuver, "Is this for one of your report cards or ship's logs or something?"

"No, I'm serious," T.J. replied, her voice growing softer, meeker. "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

Seth stared at her in disbelief and confusion. "This is what keeps you up at night?"

"Tonight it did," she admitted. "As a matter of fact, worrying what might happen to any of us in the next ten years is enough to keep me from getting a good night's rest ever again."

Sympathetic but still confused, Seth shook his head before stepping aside. "Come on in. Excuse the mess."

As Davenport crossed the threshold, she came to realize she had never been inside the Commander's private living quarters before. She would have chastised his ability to tidy up after himself if she wasn't preoccupied with taking in every possible detail. And those details did add up to a rather impressive mess.

Dirty coffee mugs and transparency printouts were strewn haphazardly about the room. Storage cabinets overflowed with a mix of clean and dirty laundry. Goddard, without a doubt, used the clothing replicator more often than he did the cleaning units installed for the express purpose of laundering clothes. T.J. took note of the old books that should have graced his shelves, but adorned the floor and one chair instead: 1984, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Catch 22... A smile graced her lips when she saw of the dog-eared copy of The Martian Chronicles open facedown on his nightstand. She felt his eyes on her as she picked up the worn volume and carefully flipped through the tattered pages. 

"Interested in my heritage, Commander?" she quipped. 

He smiled wryly at her and folded his arms across his chest, as was customary when they engaged in lighthearted banter. "I just find old science fiction to be very entertaining."

"I daresay I find it rather amusing, myself," T.J. admitted. "Though STARDOG lore appears to borrow from stories such as these more often than I'd like."

"I don't think the problem is copyright infringement. It's that sometimes tall-tales aren't far from the truth," Goddard countered. "Need I remind you of the doppelganger?"

"I wish you wouldn't." T.J. winced. "The thought is still terrifying: that something could be roaming around using my likeness and identity for its own nefarious purposes."

The playful gleam in Goddard's eyes dimmed. "Yeah."

T.J. carefully set the book back as she found it, leaving it sag open rather than place it on a shelf. Orderly chaos. "Back to the matter at hand."

"Where do I see myself in ten years?" Goddard paused to consider this. "I hope to be alive, for one thing. Realistically, I could end up in prison. I don't like to think about that, but it's definitely a possibility."

Davenport nodded solemnly, having already taken this into consideration. "But is that really where you see yourself?" she asked crestfallen. "Is that truly where you think you will end up?"

"Well it's obviously not where I want to be."

"Where do you want to be?"

He looked down at the floor. "Promise you won't laugh?"

"I promise." T.J. felt her heart thudding in her chest. This was by far the most intimate conversation they'd ever shared.

"I want... to be teaching." He paused for her reaction and was disappointed when she remained pokerfaced. "Turns out I ended up liking what was supposed to be my punishment. Pretty twisted, right?"

"No, it isn't." T.J. couldn't help the smile that made its way not only to her lips but to her eyes as well. "Not at all. I think it's wonderful. You see the potential in otherwise problematic situations and difficult people. You acknowledge that potential and it blossoms into something wonderful. I daresay I am also a little jealous of your ability to connect with the students so easily. Contrary to what I may have stated in the past, I think you are a brilliant teacher."

Goddard shrugged. "I guess I'm okay at it. Between your infinite knowledge and my experience, I think we get by."

"Commander, I do not know everything. And you don't give yourself enough credit." 

"Well, Space hates inflated egos."

T.J. smiled sweetly at him, but she wasn't content to end her line of questioning just yet. "You say you love teaching. Would you want any children of your own?"

Goddard didn't see what difference it made, so he answered, "Had anyone asked me back at the Starcademy, I'd have said absolutely not."

"And that's still the case?" 

Goddard chuckled. "I may have to reconsider. The students love to try our patience, but they're pretty damn extraordinary. There are times I feel overly protective of them for a commanding officer. Being a default father figure out here wasn't a responsibility I wanted at first, but I guess I have to face the fact that the students may be the closest I'll come to having children of my own. I'm proud of them as if they're mine. I care about them as if they are mine." A thoughtful pause, and then, "Anymore questions?"

"None at the moment," T.J. answered, suddenly finding it difficult to suppress the ache in her chest and keep her emotions in check. 

"What about you? Same questions."

"I suppose I just wish us all the happy endings we deserve. Ten years from now, I want to be happy, whatever that may mean to me at that time. Though I am coming to find that I am very happy right here. In space. With stories to tell and people who matter a great deal to me. And I suppose I have you to thank for that."

Goddard smirked. "Can't take all the credit. If I recall, you had a lot of say as to whether or not you came aboard."

Davenport thought back to the fateful day The Christa had docked at the Starcademy. She and the Commander saw the ship from the classroom and argued the entire way to the landing bay. She could have let him go and alerted the proper authorities from inside the school. According to protocol, that is that she should have done: listen to her brain. But her gut instinct told her to follow, so she did. T.J. had taken a page from Goddard's book (required reading) and followed him. She would follow him to the edge of the universe and back. As fate would have it, that metaphor had become her reality. 

"Under dire circumstances, sometimes rules are meant to be broken," she reasoned. 

Seth cocked his head to the side and studied the woman before him. T.J. had changed so much over the course of their journey. He was proud of her. Away from structure, she realized that rules weren't all she had to cling to and that being a disciplinarian wasn't all she had to offer. By growing attached to the crew, she was acting in their best interests, whether or not rules applied. She now trusted herself and others, and the sensitive side Goddard always suspected existed was breaking through the cracks of her cold exterior. It was...nice, to say the very least. 

"And the kids question?" he wondered.

T.J. sighed. "I did want children. I mean, I still do. But I spent so much time back home focusing on my career that love and marriage and children fell by the wayside. Of course, now my career is ruined. And by the time we get back to the Starcademy, it may be too late for the rest of it."

Goddard shook his head vigorously. "No, you could still share your life with someone and have a family of your own, if that's what you want."

"Yes, but who would ever understand me well enough to accept me flaws and all? An adventure like this changes a person. I already have a figurative cargo hold's worth of 'baggage,' as it were," T.J. lamented. "That in and of itself isn't exactly attractive. I'm likely to scare most men away. Goodness knows I did before. I'm bound to be even worse in a few years' time."

"T.J., you're a beautiful, intelligent woman. Any man who doesn't see that doesn't deserve you. But an aging defiant STARDOG washout like me is a little harder to love."

T.J.'s eyes went wide, and her heart skipped a beat as she locked eyes with Goddard. He had an air of melancholy about him, and T.J. pushed the compliments off to one side—she'd process his feelings about her later. More important now was how he viewed himself, and T.J. could not allow him to believe his future would be as bleak as he assumed. She had difficulty finding the words to reassure him, so what came out was a repeated, "You really don't give yourself enough credit" that may or may not have sounded overly sentimental.

"Nah." Goddard shook his head. "I think you give me too much credit."

"I disagree." T.J. changed tactics, deciding that being playful might lift the Commander's spirits. She folded her arms and quirked an eyebrow, doing her best impression of his signature wry smile. "Space may hate inflated egos, but I do believe it also hates self-pity."

"Maybe you're right. You usually are, when it comes to me." 

Davenport swallowed hard as her heart fluttered. "I wish you and I could have more conversations like this," she confessed. "About more than Starcademy curriculum or the students' academic progress. I'd like to get to know you better. Not as a captain, but as a person."

"I'm not a captain anymore, remember? My rank before we left was—"

"You are still Captain in my eyes." T.J. bit her lip. "Calling you 'Commander' now doesn't feel right to me."

"Never sounded right to be either," he agreed. "Listen, we're not at the Starcademy anymore. I'm not a commander, and you're not..."

He paused as T.J. stiffened. She had been fired from her position as Starcademy Assistant Principal, and the headmistress had made it abundantly clear that she would not be welcomed back if she returned.

He tried again, "What I mean is we have to keep our titles for the students in order to maintain some illusion of authority out here. At least until they catch onto us."

"So you fear they will stage a mutiny as well?" Davenport teased.

Goddard laughed. "I used to. Not anymore. My point is that titles are too formal for friends, don't you think?"

"I suppose so."

"Right. So." He cleared his throat and extended his hand. "Hi. I'm Seth."

She broke into a wide smile, somehow successfully stifling a girlish giggle as she met him halfway. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Seth. I'm T.J."


End file.
